From September 3 to 5, the EXPO International Exhibition Center hosted Astana Coffee Expo 2026—the premier regional trade show for the coffee industry, specialty roasters, and HoReCa equipment vendors (astanacoffeeexpo.com). Reviewing the roster through an IT industry lens reveals that among 61 participating commercial exhibitors, exactly four companies specialize in enterprise software, POS automation, and cloud management systems.
RAEM served as an accredited media partner for the exhibition.
The Four Tech Vendors Automating Kazakhstan’s Coffee Sector
While roasteries, espresso machine manufacturers, and syrup suppliers dominated the floor, four software companies showcased platforms critical to the operational economics of food service establishments:
- Paloma365 (Kazakhstan): A prominent domestic cloud POS and warehouse inventory management platform tailored for restaurants, fast casual spots, and coffee shop chains. Paloma highlighted automated fiscal cash register integration, Kaspi Pay direct QR checkout, and multi-location warehouse transfer automation.
- Quick Resto (CIS / Central Asia): An established cloud-based ecosystem featuring point-of-sale terminals, kitchen display systems (KDS), and dynamic CRM loyalty programs that allow coffee brands to track customer retention cohorts and average ticket growth.
- iiko (International / Regional Integrators): Enterprise ERP automation designed for medium to large restaurant networks. Exhibits demonstrated automated ingredient write-offs, predictive inventory ordering based on historical foot traffic weather models, and labor cost optimization.
- SmartPOS / SmartTech Solutions: Integrated payment hardware and software providers offering turnkey Android-based mobile terminals combining cash registers, banking acquiring, and loyalty barcode scanning into a single handheld device.
Why Tech Adoption Is Accelerating Across Regional Coffee Chains
Presentations on the business conference stage highlighted a clear structural shift: the era of running independent coffee shops on paper logs or generic spreadsheets has ended across Kazakhstan’s major cities.
Three primary pressures are driving coffee operators toward enterprise SaaS:
Tightening Tax and Fiscal Telemetry: Kazakhstan’s State Revenue Committee has mandated universal electronic fiscal cash registers (OFD) and digital product tracing for dairy and packaged goods, making real-time POS synchronization legally non-negotiable.
Severe Margin Compression: Global green coffee bean futures surged by over 40% throughout 2025–2026 due to climate-driven harvest contractions in Brazil and Vietnam. To remain profitable without pricing out consumers, local cafe operators rely on automated ingredient portion tracking and waste minimization software.
Omnichannel Loyalty and Delivery Integrations: Coffee consumers increasingly order through mobile delivery apps (Wolt, Yandex Eats, Choco) or pre-order on mobile apps to skip morning queues. POS platforms that lack seamless open API integration are rapidly being abandoned by growing retail chains.
